The mass shooting at an Aurora movie theater that killed 12 people and wounded dozens early Friday has a sickening familiarity.

In the wake of other murderous outbursts in this state, from the Columbine massacre in 1999 to the New Life Church shootings in 2007, people are left asking — here and nationally — why Colorado?

It is a compelling question with no easy answer.

Our state does not seem burdened with onerous national stereotypes that have saddled other states such as Arizona (reactionaries), California (weirdness) and New Jersey (corruption). If anything, there is an image of Colorado as a haven for chilled-out mellowness amid sunshine and gorgeous scenery.

Gov. John Hickenlooper went before the cameras Saturday to call the shootings the act of an “unspeakably troubled individual.”

“There’s no way we can turn the clock back, but we can take this abhorrent, inconceivable event and do everything we can to make it better,” he said.

But three massacres in a 13-year span raise unsettling thoughts about why this has happened here.

“I think it’s a tough but valid question,” said Del Elliott, founding director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “These events are disturbing to me, but they look like an anomaly — terrible but within the realm of random events.”

Elliott said that nationwide, Colorado is in the bottom third statistically for gun violence.

“But the particular form of this violence — shooting with massive amounts of death — we do seem to have more of that,” he added.

Elliott noted that the state narrowly avoided a similar disaster in 2006, when law officers killed Duane Morrison, who had taken students hostage at Platte Canyon High School. One student, Emily Keyes, was killed by the gunman.

“I’ve heard arguments about the number of guns in Colorado and the perspective we have on them,” Elliott said. “But these events seem very carefully planned, so that the availability of guns is almost irrelevant. Anyone with that level of intent is going to find weapons, legally or illegally.”

Jennifer Harman, a professor at Colorado State University specializing in social psychology and violence, said there could be “cultural and social differences in the West about using violence as a way to deal with stress or provocation.”

“There is even a theory that there are regional differences in when it’s acceptable to use violence,” she said. “The thinking is that it’s more acceptable in the South or West.”

Harman cited a study called “Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South,” authored by Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen, that made the case for regional differences in the use of violence to settle grievances.

Still, Harman said that theory gets complicated in Colorado, where so many residents arrive from elsewhere. (James Eagan Holmes, the 24-year-old man accused in the shootings, grew up in California.) Thousands of native Midwesterners live here. Ditto for East Coasters, Texans and Californians.

The Old West myth — and the New West one too, for that matter &mdash; holds that people can pull up roots and reinvent themselves. But such transience can lead to emotional isolation. And Harman noted that people who are social misfits and feel ostracized tend to lash out, not withdraw.

“It does seem this state has an image that people are happy here,” said Patricia Limerick, a CU history professor who chairs the Center of the American West. “But if you’re unhappy and wildly so, that’s a way to contrast yourself with the rest of the world and withdraw.”

Limerick said she could see no Colorado connection.

“In these cases, it just seems the terrible strangeness of the individual is so much more of a factor that I can’t put it in relationship to the state,” she said.

On Friday, Hickenlooper assured people that this is a “safe city, in a safe state, in a safe country.” Former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, in a telephone interview, said the shooting was “just happenstance.”

“I don’t think there’s anything unique to Colorado that caused this,” Romer said. “In our search for answers, we reach for connections that aren’t there.”Romer, governor from 1987 to 1999, pointed to the general availability of guns as the driver in such incidents. Aurora police said Holmes brought an AR-15 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun and two .40-caliber Glock handguns to the Century Aurora 16.

“When I woke up and heard this story, the first thing that occurred to me as the cause is the widespread possession of guns in our society,” Romer said. “We have to understand as a society that the proliferation of guns will lead to their use. It’s just common sense.”

Elliott, the CU professor, concurred — up to a point.

“When we moved here from California in 1967, one of the reasons we came was because Colorado seemed a much safer place to live and raise a family,” Elliott said.

Like the rest of us, he was still trying to wrap his head around what happened and why, once again, mass murder had found its way to Colorado.

A transit village with apartments, retailers, restaurants and a hotel is rising in Milpitas next to The Great Mall, close to light rail and the under-construction BART station. It’s one of several Silicon Valley projects sprouting up near transit.